House vote threatens to undermine Census and ACS, warns MRA

US — The Marketing Research Association (MRA) has criticised recent actions by the House of Representatives which threaten to undermine both the Census and the American Community Survey.

In a vote last week, the House passed the $51.2bn Commerce-Justice-State (CJS) Appropriations bill, but this included only $973m for the Census Bureau – an amount the MRA said is “likely insufficient to conduct the American Community Survey (ACS) in FY2015 and requisite testing to prepare for the 2020 Census”.

Meanwhile, as part of the CJS vote, the MRA reports that “the House passed an amendment… to make response to the ACS voluntary instead of mandatory”.

The amendment was put forward by Congressman Ted Poe, and was passed “by voice”. Although the MRA has campaigned to keep the ACS mandatory, it said the result was not as bad as it might seem.

“A voice vote makes it easier to defeat the amendment language when the House and Senate have to work out the differences between their respective versions of the appropriations legislation, because only Rep. Poe is on the record in support of it,” the MRA explained.